Noah has recently moved on from The Daily Show, and I’d love to see him do some voice acting. Noah speaks and even sings in Xhosa and Zulu. He gives different people from his past different voices. His storytelling style is engaging and laugh-out-loud hilarious. I never watched The Daily Show, not with Jon Stewart or with Trevor Noah, but it is clear Noah’s success is well-deserved. This memoir is Trevor’s story, but it is also the story of the many obstacles constantly thrown in his and his mother’s path. I had no idea Trevor Noah had been through all that! It’s incredible that he became what he did, and he certainly owes a lot of that to his mother. Some parts are downright shocking and heartbreaking. Some parts are poignant reflections on race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa. I was hooked on Trevor Noah’s narration of the audiobook in minutes. This is one of my favorite audiobooks yet! A must for high school libraries. Nevertheless, Noah’s devoted and uncompromising mother-as voiced by her son-steals the show. Noah’s virtuoso embodiment of all the characters from his childhood, and his ability to perform accents and dialects effortlessly in English, Xhosa, and Zulu, garnered the Audie Award for Best Male Narrator in 2018. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical. Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. Audie Award for Best Male Narrator (2018).Thurber Prize for American Humor (2017).NAACP Image Award for Debut Author and for Biography / Auto-biography (2017).Evergreen Teen Book Award Nominee (2019).Consider Born a Crime another such gift to her-and an enormous gift to the rest of us." -USA Today " Noah] thrives with the help of his astonishingly fearless mother.
What also helped was having a mother like Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah. Born a Crime is not just an unnerving account of growing up in South Africa under apartheid, but a love letter to the author's remarkable mother." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times " An] unforgettable memoir." - Parade "What makes Born a Crime such a soul-nourishing pleasure, even with all its darker edges and perilous turns, is reading Noah recount in brisk, warmly conversational prose how he learned to negotiate his way through the bullying and ostracism. Noah's family, at life in South Africa under apartheid. By turns alarming, sad and funny, Trevor Noah's] book provides a harrowing look, through the prism of Mr. Praise for Born a Crime " A] compelling new memoir. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother's unconventional, unconditional love. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. It is also the story of that young man's relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother-his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist.
Finally liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man's coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, New York Times - Newsday - Esquire - NPR - Booklist Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth.